University corporate group cooperation review 2025: Shared goals boost cooperation
We have entered the following goals uniformly in both TAMK’s and Tampere University’s action and financial plans for 2025–2028:
- The internal synergy of the university corporate group is boosted with a holistic approach in research, development and innovation activities, education and services.
- In RDI activities, the goal is to increase the number and volume of shared projects.
- The aim of the cooperation is to create new, impactful developments in education that bring value to both institutions and improve the accessibility of education.
- Solutions required by growing internationality are developed together.
- Externally, the university corporate group presents itself as a single partner, making essential partnerships increasingly shared between the schools.
- The implementation of mutual services is reviewed in selected areas, with the services’ management model assessed and renewed as needed.
- We will also bolster the role of the joint TUNI rectorate in providing more determined development for the university corporate group’s mutual operations and leadership.
We actively govern and monitor the implementation of these goals. This is tasked to the executive team responsible for the university corporate group’s cooperation, and it is also a part of annual activity plans.
Deeper education cooperation and new developments
We deepened our education cooperation, specifically in the HUBS’ entrepreneurial studies. During the 2024–2025 semester, as many as 5,211 credits were completed in sustainable entrepreneurial studies within the university corporate group. We streamlined the transition from Bachelor's to Master's level education, agreeing on route studies for Master’s programmes in finance and facilitating a transition from the Bachelor’s Degree Programme in Building Services Engineering to the corresponding Master’s Programme.
Other developments in our education cooperation included, among others, entrepreneurial studies for health technology, mutual studies for physiotherapy for the elderly and the collective planning for the Master’s Programme in Experience Economy. Our curricula for construction engineering consists of approximately 80 credits of joint courses, of which approximately 60 credits are included in every student’s degree. In education support services, we reinforced cooperation e.g. in electronic entrance examinations, for which we recruited a joint ICT project manager.
First mutual Professor of Practice
In November, TAMK and Tampere University appointed TAMK’s Principal Lecturer Arja Halkoaho as a Professor of Practice specialising in P4 medicine. This is the very first jointly established Professor of Practice role between TAMK and the university.
TAMK and Tampere University participated actively in the preparations for a vision for higher education and research, led by the Ministry of Education and Culture. The university corporate group was involved in a workgroup investigating the group’s best practices and identifying any funding- and legislation-related obstacles to the development of intra-group cooperation. TAMK's and Tampere University's goal is to resolutely harness the university's corporate group in a way that retains the dual model.
Good feedback on shared services
The feedback we received for the university corporate group’s shared services remained at previous years’ level. Feedback for the services was mainly positive, but there were requests for more local services. The feedback included praise for, for instance, the ICT services’ development work, which has improved self-service tools and made them available on the intranet.
In the ‘Students on the Move’ project, we inched closer to a more active student life. The project has progressed in terms of the development of organisational culture, recreational sports as well as study environments.
We are intent on working together, and we actively assess and support new developments and cooperation opportunities.
